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How is the Reddit new UI helping their user experience?

1 points by yalogin ↗ HN
Lots of people here that work on similar stuff and may be can provide some insight. I have always wondered how the redesign done a few years ago makes it better.

The main thing I see is -

- individual threads cannot be collapsed (HN is awesome that way)

- Every time I refresh a page it takes me to the top

- The space between lines is too much and so screen space is not efficiently used. There is even a lot of space left on teh left and right of the text

I don't know if any paid attention to the redesign. I am really curious how it makes sense. Does it somehow provide them with better tracking and so better ads? I don't get how removing functionality actually makes it better.

7 comments

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lifeplusplus
Digg
yalogin
This is exactly my thought. They copied digg 2.0 as is. It’s like they saw the users revolting against digg redesign and moving enmasse to Reddit and said, that’s the design we want for site too.
HDMI_Cable
I don’t think the new redesign is supposed to. For the most part, it seems like a ploy by marketing executives to increase the monetization and dark patterns on the platform, and by graphic designers to push a “modern look”. It wasn’t made for us.
yalogin
Can you elaborate on the dark patterns? I am not familiar with those kind of issues and am sure there is something positive for them, if not for the users. Or may be some product manager made a wrong decision and instead of correcting and accepting their mistake doubled down on it.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
qohen
BTW, for those who weren't aware, you can have the old Reddit experience by using old.reddit.com in Reddit URLs -- there are browser extensions that will take care of this for you automatically.